CareOregon

Eric Hunter, CEO of safety-net health plan CareOregon, said that if its population-health efforts were as successful as he’d like, hospitals would significantly cut back on their services.

“I tell hospitals, and they hate when I tell them this, ‘In my perfect world, I would never need you,’” Mr. Hunter told panelists at a Politico event. “My goal is to put you out of business. If we can do the right thing, all you’ll have is an ER for when somebody gets in a car wreck.”

But many providers won’t have access to strong community health programs such as CareOregon’s.

Karen DeSalvo, M.D., former national coordinator for health information technology at the the Department of Health and Human Services, pressed for culture changes that include breaking down data silos that block providers from seeing the full picture of a patient’s, or a community’s, health.

Dr. DeSalvo said: “It means that we really have to rethink how we look at health.”